YOU might think it’s a bit early in the year to start talking about books to buy for Christmas but the number of shopping days are fast disappearing and it’s well worth drawing up a festive list, writes Andrew Ffrench.

In these cash-strapped times, before you visit the high street stores pop into charity shops including Oxfam and hunt down some old classics.

Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and his other Christmas stories should be top of everyone’s yuletide reading list as an important reminder that it is better to give than to receive.

And any tale by Thomas Hardy or Sherlock Holmes author Conan Doyle will soon provide a warm glow.

But once you have made it to WH Smith, Waterstone’s or Blackwell’s, at this time of year there is a bewildering choice of books on display.

Publishers go into overdrive to get their titles out in time to catch the lucrative market and shoppers are spoilt for choice.

First in my shopping basket would be a paperback copy of Any Human Heart (£8.99 Penguin), William Boyd’s novel, which is written in the form of Logan Mountstuart’s journals.

The journal charts Mountstuart’s life throughout the 20th century and it’s a great time to read Boyd’s most popular novel because it is currently being dramatised on TV.

Then I would be tempted by Life (£20 W&N), the autobiography of Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards.

He knows where all the bodies are buried unlike his sparring partner Mick Jagger, who tried to write his version of events but realised he couldn’t remember enough to write a decent book.

Back on the fiction front, the master of horror and suspense Stephen King has produced his latest collection of stories entitled Full Dark, No Stars (Hodder, £18.99). There is murder and mayhem so you might need to line up a few Babychams before you embark on this one.

On a more comforting note, there are a large number of cookbooks on offer and my selection is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Everyday (Bloomsbury, £25) to accompany the excellent TV series.

Some of the recipes do actually look possible to make although you might have to visit one or two posh supermarkets to source the ingredients.

For football fans, one of the stand-out titles is My Life in Football, a hardback collection of photos with accompanying text by Sir Bobby Charlton. The Headline hardback costs £25 but if you shop around you can buy it for a lot less.

Avoid the humour titles where possible, although some of them are small enough to fit into a stocking.

But if you are going to visit the humour section perhaps your best bet is S*** My Dad Says by American author Justin Halpern (Boxtree, £9.99).

And history buffs should revisit the 1970s with Dominic Sandbrook’s State of Emergency: The Way We Were, about Britain between 1970 and 1974 (Allen Lane, £30).

With the coalition cuts coming thick and fast, it’s a timely reminder of darker days.

* Oxfam’s St Giles shop was the charity’s first UK bookshop when it opened in 1987.